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In early 2014, I spent some time exploring the coastline around southern Chile looking for waves and generally just checking out a place that I had always wanted to visit. I ended up heading as far south as Chiloe which is the first island on the coast of where Patagonia starts. It had been a really slow start to the season for waves and so I found myself with my brother Phil and close friend Chris looking for other entertainment while we waited for swell.

We had got talking to an English lady called Kate up the coast and she mentioned Cochamó. She told us about these crazy waterslides and pristine rivers, epic campgrounds and insane granite climbing faces. The place sounded so amazing we had to go and check it out for ourselves.

Above: Horses cruised around the campgrounds the whole time giving the place an even wilder feeling than it already has. All photos by Patch Wilson

“Just go in,” said the woman’s voice. “There’s nobody there at the moment but the house is always left open. Yours is room two, upstairs.”

I was calling ahead to the small guesthouse where we had booked a room. Slightly bewildered, I looked across at my traveling buddy, Martín. “It’s cool man, aquí no roban,” he said, in his usual mix of Argentine Spanish and colonial English. This place was nothing like the streets of Cape Town Martín had just come from, or the Buenos Aires he had grown up in. This was officially the safest country in the world, where the most serious violent crime might be a pub brawl between two drunken fishermen.

What were we thinking? Was it arrogant of us to go straight up this blank-looking headwall? The chances that this line would go free were pretty slim. Was it the aesthetics of the blankness and steepness that had attracted us? Why didn’t we choose to follow more obvious features that were more likely to go?

After having climbed some of the classics in Madagascar’s Tsaranoro Valley with Argyro Papathanasiou from Greece in July, I was joined in August by Siebe Vanhee from Belgium, who immediately spotted a major unclimbed line on Tsaranoro Atsimo, to the right of Mora Mora (a line freed by Adam Ondra in 2010 at 8c).

Above: Deciphering the puzzle of Fire In The Belly: One finger razor blade edge with right hand to bad sloper with left. Photo: Siebe Vanhee

Winter in Iceland is ridiculously unpredictable. It can be beaten by wind and swell one minute and infused with silence and solitude the next. Drawn by the appeal of its wilderness, my partner and I dreamed of traveling there for a long time. Combining both of our passions for surfing and exploring, we decided to go self-supported, on skis, to the snowy valleys of the north in search of a unique experience.

It’s right in front of me now, directly in my face. For weeks it had been little more than a vague concept we kept alive solely by reassurance and persistence, every day moving forward, every day pedaling closer to our fate, waiting to discover if it looked anything like we told ourselves it would. Now we’re here, at the end of the line.

Amos, Liz and I hopped on our bikes in Washington State with our sights set on Zion National Park, and eventually Salt Lake City. Until now, the line had been a shimmering ribbon of road that stretched to the horizon—a line we couldn’t see the end of as it climbed through mountains, followed the winding path of an oxbowed river, and cut like a laser through the desert. We followed it diligently. Every day was a pilgrimage, every mile earned and etched into our bodies. The land we traveled though burned into our minds.

Maps. We’ve all studied them. Stuffed them into backpacks or the seatback pocket of our car. Maybe we’ve even been led astray by a map. But have you ever thought about the person who made that map? Or how that person might influence your initial impression of a landscape?

“A map is not a perfect representation of a landscape. It’s an abstract representation,” says cartographer Marty Schnure. Today, we have a story about a mapmaker, Patagonia Park, and the process Marty uses to create a map—a map that she hopes will connect you to a place.

One of the primary reasons my husband James and I have gone sailing with our three kids (now ages 7, 5 and 2) has been to give them the gift of experiencing life in the wilderness. For those who decide to disconnect from the masses—whether it be at sea, in the mountains, river, surf or wherever your preferred environment is—choosing to connect with nature comes with its personal rewards.

For the past four years we have sailed over 25,000 ocean miles as a family and lived full-time aboard our 40-foot sailboat Anasazi Girl. Our trade-wind routes have taken us across the North Atlantic, Equator and South Atlantic. We have rounded the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin and Cape Reinga via the South Indian Ocean, Great Australian Bight, Tasman Sea and South Pacific.

Above: Tormentina (3) and her brother Raivo (9 months) on their first offshore passage from Maine to France. North Atlantic (July 2011). All photos: Somira Sao

Last year I got to meet fellow Patagonia ambassadors Kimi Werner and Léa Brassy for the first time. Patagonia kindly arranged for all of us to meet upon the waters of some remote atolls in French Polynesia that have come to be my beloved backyard and playground. From all that I knew about them, I expected we’d have an enjoyable time but I never imagined that we would connect in such a way that, by the end of our time together, it felt like I had gained two sisters.

All three of us enjoy very similar things—wilderness, wildlife, waves, conscious eating, etc.—but I feel like it was our open minds and hearts that made this time together so genuine and so special. Whether we were diving, sharing waves, giggling under the stars at night, wandering on the motu looking for coconuts or just watching the seabirds circle and dive, it was like they saw exactly what I saw: divinity, freedom, peace, respect. Being with Kimi and Léa in nature felt like being completely understood.

Above: the four-video series documenting Liz, Léa and Kimi’s time together in French Polynesia. Videos: Patagonia

Honestly, we went to Iceland to catch big fish. It was that simple. We wanted to bask in the late Arctic sun while bringing dreamy meter-long Atlantic salmon to hand. We wanted to drink whiskey afterwards, go to bed and do it again every day we could. What surprised us wasn’t our ability to check that mission off the list it was the insignificance that those goals held compared to what we actually discovered. The Chase: a tiny film is an ode to the friendships and experiences that were shared while chasing our passions.

Exactly one month ago I tightened the last bolt in the last hold on the first-ever climbing boulder in Mozambique—and then climbed on it with over 1,000 Mozambican school children.

Tonight, over dinner in Central Mozambique, I made a promise to climb a 12-pitch run-out granite slab with a Mozambican farmer named Elias who’s never roped up in his life.

Tomorrow, I meet 25 African students in Gorongosa National Park to spend 10 days exploring the vortex of conservation, science, leadership, stewardship and adventure.

And all of this started because of a blurry photo of a mangy rock face.

Above: The first round of Mozambican students arrive to “climb” on Mount Namuli with Patagonia ambassador Majka Burhardt. The first-ever climbing wall was built to showcase The Lost Mountain, a combination science, conservation and adventure initiative on Mozambique’s Mount Namuli. Photo: Gustav Rensburg